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MAMMON-WORSHIP. 

A SERMON 

PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, BALTIMORE, 

ON THE MORNING OF 

THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY, 
JANUARY 13th, 1850. 

WILLIAM ROLLINSON WHITTINGHAM, 

BISHOP OF MARYLAND. 



PUBLISHED BT REQUEST OP A COMMITTEE OF TEE CONGREGATION APPOINTED TO 
COLLECT SUBSCPaPTIONS FOR THE LIQUIDATION OP TEE CHURCH DEBT. 



BALTIMORE: 
PRINTED BY JOS. ROBINSON. 

1850. 



MAMMON-WORSHIP. 



A SERMON 

PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, BALTIMORE, 

ON THE MORNING OF 

THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY, 
JANUARY 13th, 1850, 

WILLIAM ROLLINSON WHITTINGHAM, 

BISHOP OF MARYLAND. 




PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OP A COMMITTEE OF THE CONGREGATION APPOINTED TO 
COLLECT SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR THE LIQUIDATION OF THE CHURCH DEBT. 



BALTIMORE: 

PRINTED BY JOS. ROBINSON. 



1850. 



A SERMON, &c. 



Isaiah, xliv. 20. 
HE FEEDETH ON ASHES. 

Of some diseases, and those not the least dangerous, it 
is a distinguishing characteristic, that the aihng fancy 
themselves in health, and resent, as rudeness and un- 
kindness, an attempt to undeceive them. 

This is especially observable in the worst family of 
diseases to which our compound frame is liable, — those 
that affect the mind. It is proverbial, that insanity can- 
not know itself, and sees nothing but insanity in the pity 
and wise counsel that would direct and help it to a 
cure. 

While the delusion reigns, its effect is pleasant. Its 
victim finds real ease and comfort, so long as it lasts, in 
the falsehood of which he is the dupe. The consump- 
tive patient travels steadily to the grave, flattered every 
day with the behef that he has made progress toward 
recovery, and as much consoled by the deceitful imagi- 
nation as he could be by a real improvement. The 
madman reigns over the kingdom in his cell with more 
of the zest of gratified ambition and satiated thirst for 



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power, than the carking anxieties attendant on a crown 
ever allow its real possessor. 

We do not deny the reahty of the benefit conferred 
by the delusion, such as it is. While it lasts, the hope of 
the dying victim of consumption is pleasant, and the 
enjoyment of the madman in his fancied kingdom hearty. 
But do we think their fancies for that reason any the 
less false infatuations 1 Does the smile that plays on the 
thin lips, as they assure us of returning health, seem any 
the less pitiable, when we think of the brief period within 
which they must stiffen in the grave, because we know 
it to be an honest index of the hope within ? Does the 
madman's stately air and elevated tone lessen the com- 
miseration awakened by the contemplation of a man — 
a being bearing his Maker's image — to whom a straw 
can suffice for a sceptre, and a joint-stool for a throne 1 

Yet how difficult to undeceive the willing subjects of 
such monstrous, but agreeable deceptions ! How hard 
to deprive them of their cherished hopes! their real en- 
joyment of their false possessions ! How thankless the 
task, of struggling with them to get at, and lift, the veil 
which hides from them their true condition, and take 
away the colored film through which they see health 
in the symptoms of decay, or dignity in the humiliating 
concomitants of restraint ! 

In the cases named, there may be thought to be no 
sufficient motive for undertaking a task so hard and 
thankless. The life undermined by disease can not be 
prolonged by the knowledge that it is fast approaching 



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its fixed period. The delusions of insanity may as well 
prevail as not, if the mind itself be not recovered from 
its ruin. 

But our nature suffers under worse disease than the 
ailments of the body, and is liable to an insanity that 
affects the soul in a higher class of functions than those 
of the mere intellect. There is a consumption of the 
heart — its affections and desires — worse than that of 
the organs of respiration. There is a madness which 
affects, not the capacities for ordinary business and en- 
joyment, but those for fellowship with God and prepara- 
tion for eternity. 

The delusions of fancied health and false enjoyment 
are inseparable attendants of the hereditary spiritual 
malady which infects us all. In its origin it was fasten- 
ed on our nature by the successful malice of the being 
who is the father of hes; and he is careful to maintain 
its prevalence by constant recourse, in the case of every 
child of Adam, to the deception which seduced our 
father to his ruin. Him he tempted by persuading to the 
harmless use of God's good gifts, and appealing to the 
evidence of sense, that the forbidden fruit was good for 
food, and pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make 
one wise. To u^ he repeats the same temptation; but, 
availing himself of the advantage gained by the primal 
sin, with the addition of the delusion, when we are suc- 
cumbing to his artifice, that still all is going well, and we 
are in a state of safety, and fulfihing the ends of our crea- 
tion and reaping the advantages God made us to enjoy. 



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" For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, 
that He might destroy the works of devil," says the word 
of God. We are celebrating the feast of the Saviour's 
Manifestation, of wdiicli this day is the octave in the 
Church's year. We may fitly turn our thoughts to that 
portion of the purpose of His manifestation which con- 
sisted in dethroning the devil, as the god of this world, 
from the hearts of those who become partakers of the 
liberty wherewith He came to make His followers free. 

It is by holding men in bondage to this present life — 
by making them servants of their animal and merely 
intellectual nature only — that Satan exercises that sway 
in this fair world of God's creation, that entitles him to 
be designated in the word of truth as " its god!' Tt is by 
giving men the power to escape the bondage of mor- 
tality, by opening their eyes to see the worthier ends of 
their existence, above and beyond the objects which 
now surround them and would engross their affections 
and desires, by calling them to a pursuit of those higher 
and nobler ends of being, by offering them the pledges 
and means of securing eternal life in this mortal state, 
by teaching them to make earthly things subservient to 
the attainment of heavenly blessings, — that the Son of 
God destroys the devil's work in man's delusion. 

Serving this life and serving God, — are, truly and 
really, the distinctions that divide mankind, as candi- 
dates for eternal Ufe. Some serve this life, after notions 
of their own, with very little of its enjoyments, and per- 
haps even in contented deprivation of much of its pos- 
sessions. Some serve it, in a miserable slavery to opin- 



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ion — some to custom — some to circumstance — some to 
constitution and temperament — some, to false, low, in- 
sufficient, superficial views of duty. But they are all 
serving this life, its pursuits, rewards, gains, obligations, 
principles and aims, and tliem only. To rise above them, 
and put them down to their true place as mere means 
and opportunities, and instruments of serving God, is the 
vocation of Christ's freemen. The manhood of the 
Eternal Son of God was taken on Him, that our nature 
might be capable of such triumph over the circumstances 
of its condition ; and in Him, we obtain the power to 
live in time, but for eternity — to use the world and all 
that is in it, not serve it — to " reign as kings," whether 
rich or poor, whether low or exalted, whether in pros- 
perity or misery, by the exercise of a will set free by the 
love of God, through faith in Him, to do His will in 
all things, and see His will over all, and in every thing 
find the end of desire and enjoyment only in the accom- 
plishment of that blessed and holy will which is our life. 

Thus faith in God (as He reveals Himself in Christ) 
becomes the line that divides the heirs of eternal life from 
the servants of that which now is, and victims of the de- 
lusions of the devil. The one question on which our 
eternity depends, is, whether we believe in God, or in 
the world and the being who is using it as his snare to 
take captive the willing victims of his lies 1 

If we believe in God, we hear and obey the teaching 
of His Son — teaching conveyed to us expressly in His 
doctrine, and most impressively in His life on earth 
among us. 



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If we believe in the world, we trust it, lay out our de- 
sires and affections on it, are satisfied with it, live for it, 
w^orship it. 

" What, worship it 1" you cry — " who worships the 
world r 

You do, my brethren, many of you — many now 
within the sound of my voice. We have heard this morn- 
ing the Divine description of idol-worship ; " He saith, 
DeHver me, for thou art my God: — he feedeth on ashes; 
a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot 
deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right 
hand f ^ " A deceived heart" is the root and essential 
condition of idolatry — a heart turned away from God — 
from His holy will and promises, in some other direction. 
It matters not what the direction is ; that is but the cir- 
cumstance of the sin ; its essence is, in the estrange- 
ment of the heart from God. The heart set on some- 
thing else than God, has an idol. Its idol is, it must 
be, ashes : for God alone is true, and good and beau- 
tiful. The creature that is taken in His place is a false 
invention, a mocking counterfeit : it is a mouthful of 
ashes to the hungry, bitterness and corrosion to the 
mouth that is seeking sweetness. 

That is taken in the place of God, in which our trust 
is put, to which our heart says, Deliver me, of which our 
practice shows, that it is our joy and stay. Vast is the 
variety of immediate preferences, by which, in subser- 



* Isaiah xliv. 17, 20. First Lesson, First Sunday after Epiphany. 



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vience to their almost infinitely diversified temperaments 
of animal and intellectual constitution, men are turned 
aside to fill their right hand with a lie. But the differ- 
ence is of degree and direction, not of kind. The self- 
approved moral man may be filling his hand with as 
mere delusion as the poor dupe of sensual pleasure ; and 
the greedy gatherer of ill gotten gains be worshipping 
as base an idol as the wretch who lets his passions loose 
against society. In their relations to human society, to 
the concerns of this present hfe, to their fellow beings 
while on their passage to the grave, the murderer and 
the fraudulent bankrupt, the libertine and the niggard, 
must be looked upon as occupying very distinct posi- 
tions : but in their relations to the God who made and 
is to judge them, to the Saviour who redeemed them, 
they stand on the same level. They have one and all 
put Him aside. They have bestowed their hearts else- 
where. The murderer serves his passions, the libertine 
his lusts, the cheat and miser their love of wealth : but 
they are all alike in bondage. They have forsaken 
God for another master : for him who uses the flesh and 
its lusts, the world and its allurements, as his instruments 
to ensnare his captives, and delude them with the be- 
lief that their slavery is freedom, their misery enjoyment. 

This bondage to Satan in serving the world, assumes 
a distinct, positive form, in the dispositions which we 
form and cherish with regard to money, and the use we 
make of it. 



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Money is the representative of the wealth and enjoy- 
ment of this hfe. Food, raiment, shelter from the in- 
clemency and changes of the weather, sensual gratifica- 
tions, cultivation of the intellect, refinement, taste, the 
luxury of having, and the luxury of giving, the sense of 
independence and the consciousness of power, influence, 
respectability, even immunity in crime, are all more or 
less directly, and more or less completely, but really and 
undeniably, within the power of money. Get money and 
you get the w^orld and all that it can give. Even char- 
acter — not false character, the flatterer's lie with tongue 
in cheek, and the needy parasite's loathsome praise, but 
true character, the result of freedom from temptation, of 
opportunity and ability to indulge kindly dispositions, of 
independence of position enabling a man to be honest,, 
truthful and consistent without much trouble — even 
character is within the magic power of money. 

Money, then, is the world, to most of us. It is the 
outward and visible, the real and tangible idol which the 
invisible god of this world makes his deluded bond-slaves 
worship. " Get money," he whispers to them, "and you 
get ease, enjoyment, comfort, respectabihty, influence, 
happiness. Have you got it \ keep it, for it may easily 
slip away, and who knows what shall then become of 
you \ Put your trust in money. That will ensure you 
wherewith to live and to enjoy life. You may want 
food and friends and opportunity of doing good, if you 
have no money. Without it, you never can. Get money. 
Keep it. Hoard it. Let your hearts rejoice as it gath- 



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«rs in your coffers, and swells out your plump bags, and 
jingles in your purses. With money you are safe : with 
money you may be useful." 

Thus he feedeth you on ashes, and turns aside the 
deceived heart, to make gold its god, and say to it. De- 
liver me, for in thee do I put my trust ! 

But from this delusion of the devil, Christ came to 
set us free. By precept and example. He contradicted 
and exposed it. One of the most prominent features of 
our Saviour's teaching is, warning against dependence 
upon wealth and worldly possessions; denunciation of 
devotion to them as hateful in the sight of God and 
ruinous to the soul ; inculcation, by positive teaching, by 
His own constant practice, and by direct and specific 
praise of instances in others, of what we call sacrifices of 
money, goods or opportunities of gain. 

A man asked Him, to speak for him to his brother, 
that he might have his share of their joint inheritance. 
Surely, a reasonable request ! a laudable recognition of 
the power and authority of the Lord ! a modest wish 
for its exertion, to an honest end ! But how was it re- 
garded by Him who measureth out the earth to its in- 
habitants, and claims His right in the beasts of the forest 
and the cattle of a thousand hills, and says that the gold 
and the silver are His own l He loathed and spurned 
the office of a judge or divider of worldly goods : and 
seizing the opportunity He turned to His disciples, to 
wean them from the idolatry in which He had been 
asked to become an accomphce, " and He said unto 



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them, Beware of covetousness!' Why ? because it is un- 
lawful desire of another's 1 No ! but in itself, as the de- 
sire of lawful, honest gain, of possession polluted by no 
contamination in its acquisition. " Beware of covetous- 
ness ; for a mans life consisteth not in the things which he 
possesseth!^ And He went on to speak a parable unto 
them, of the rich fool who tilled his ground honestly, and 
filled his barns thriftily, and pleased himself in the snug 
thought of his comfortable independence, till the voice 
came — an apoplexy, perhaps, or a palsy of the heart — 
and required his soul, and in terrible irony asked him, 
whose the things should be, which he had provided ] 
Is there no Nathan here, to go round this congregation 
and say to each whom it concerns. Thou art the man ] 
Yes : God's angel will. His Spirit does. O my broth- 
er, stop not the ear to its still, small voice ! it may save 
thee an eternity of unavailing sorrows ! 

But was that the only solemn warning on this subject, 
given us by the Son of God \ If it were, it were enough 
— enough to tingle in the ears of those who have 
wealth, and to chill the hearts of those who know how 
they are longing and striving for it. But you know how 
far, how very far that lesson, plain and unmistakeable as 
it is, is from being our Saviour's only admonition to be- 
ware of him who is feeding us on ashes ! Who has not 
read, and wondered at the beauty, and still more mar- 
velled at the force, (little as we may have regarded and 
obeyed it) of the sermon about serving God and Mam- 
mon \ The two masters are brought plainly out. Their 



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two services are distinguished and contrasted. There 
is such a thing as devil-worship — for the devil is the 
opponent, tiie antagonist, the enemy of God's love 
to man. And that worship of the devil consists in serv- 
ing Mammon. Who does not expect to hear next of 
some vile, or dread abomination ? But that which our 
Lord contrasts with the service of God, as darkness vjiih 
the lighty is taking thought — bestow^ing anxious care — 
giving ourselves anxiety, of desire, or forecast, or apprehen- 
sion, — for our life, about food or raiment. Dependence 
for that upon any thing beneath God's care and fore- 
sight, and wisely providing love, is declared to be choos- 
ing another master — hating Him in whom we live and 
move and have our being, in comparison of the things 
by which that being is to be sustained, and in which it 
is enjoyed. When God comes among us, and teaches us 
how to use His gifts. He denounces as Mammon's ser- 
vice — He specifies, — not the madness of the brainsick 
hoarder, who is accumulating thousands upon tens of 
thousands in yearly narrowed outlays from yearly swel- 
ling incomes; but the mere anxiety of one who seeks hut 
for food and raiment. To say to these, Deliver me ; to 
fix the heart's desires and cares on these ; to trust for 
them to cares, or toils, or money and money's worth ; is 
to bestow on them what God reserves unto Himself — 
to make them deceivers of the heart, to feed on the bit- 
terness of their ashes, and bow down, in them, to the 
god of this world's worship. 



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It was in exact accordance with this teaching, that 
when He saw a certain poor widow cast in, of her 
penary, all the living that she had unto the offerings of 
OoD, He called the attention of His disciples to her 
deed, and pointed that out to their admiration, as more, 
in His sight, than the rich were doing while they cast in 
large gifts of their abundance. Would He have so dis- 
tinguished it, but to praise it 1 Would He have praised 
it, if not in itself the proper course 1 That widow be- 
heved in God, and beheved not in the world. She trusted 
God for supply of her deep poverty ; and she trusted not 
in uncertain riches. Her works displayed her faith : and 
our faith, my brethren, shows itself in the convulsive 
grasp with which we clutch the money, be it much or 
little, that the father of lies is persuading us to make our 
god. 

In another way the faith of an earnest and honest 
heart, in choosing between God and Mammon, displayed 
itself in the use of the " very costly" ointment, made by 
Mary at the feast in Bethany. That deed received the 
very pecuhar mark of approbation, in which it stands 
alone, to have our Saviour's own assurance that it 
should form an inseparable portion of His history ; be 
told, and wondered at, and copied by the few who have 
spiritual understanding to receive the lesson, and strength 
of faith to use it, wherever the gospel shall be preached 
through all the earth and throughout all time; and that 
just because of what the world would call its recklessness, 
what Judas, (the traitor, in whose heart Satan entered, first 



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to make him covetous, then a thief, and then a betrayer 
and mm'derer of the Lord of glory) did call its prodigal 
unthriftness. Mary believed in Him on whose head she 
pom'ed the ointment. Her heart rested in Him. She 
cared for nothing, longed for nothing but His glory. She 
saw blessedness in advancing that, even by so small a 
thing as the lavishing on His use a costly ointment. 
Faith like hers can see no other use in riches, desire no 
other gratification from their possession, than their em- 
ployment in the service of the Lord, in whose blood it 
sees its ransom, in whose glory it finds its exceeding 
great reward. 

These facts, my brethren, I have a reason for bringing 
before you at this time. Beside that we are now just 
closing the season of gifts and of reckoning up of gains ; 
beside that w^e have been meditating on the visit to 
Christ at Bethlehem by those who brought gold and 
frankincense and myrrh as gifts to Him in pledge and 
earnest of the homage of the Gentiles — (^f us, whose 
representatives they w^ere, for whom they pledged a will- 
ing service of the best and all we have, in proportion as 
we share their faith; beside these circumstances of the sea- 
son, there is at this juncture a call to remind you of the 
necessity of guarding against him who would gladly 
make you feed on ashes, in making riches your depend- 
ence, and withholding when it is a time to give, or spar- 
ing when there is opportunity of doing good. 

I have heard, for weeks past, of an effort now making 
to relieve this church fi*om the burden of a heavy debt. 



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I have been myself, in some sort, a party in an attempt 
to provide for the erection of another house of God for 
our fast increasing population. To accomplish both 
these works, gifts in money to an amount which our 
way of dealing with things sacred would make us con- 
sider large, will be required. In their accompUshment, 
the glory of God and the honor of His great Name will 
be directly advanced ; but it will be with no immediate 
result of calculable return. There is no man or woman 
here of whom it can be said, "It is your duty, rather than 
another's to do this thing. You are bound to contribute 
so much." All are bound, by an obligation binding upon 
all, and upon each, only as it is so upon all. 

To the first work, the release of this church from 
debt, the honor of God (reverently so to speak) obliges 
you. It is involved in the just payment of what is justly 
owed. It is tarnished before men by the present state 
of things. Honesty in the man, is doubly bounden on 
the Christian. Honesty in the individual, is still more 
obhgatory on the congregation associated for purposes 
of worship, in the Name of Him who is just, and true 
and holy. 

In the accomphshment of both undertakings — the 
release of this church from debt, and the erection of 
another, so much wanted, — the interest of our commu- 
nion is involved. That interest requires success, not 
merely for the Church's reputation in men's account — 
that is comparatively a light thing, although not so 
light as to deserve to be despised — but for its character 



17 



as a body owning, carrying oat, guided, ruled, animated 
by, the Gospel of truth and love ; for its fitness to be 
the receptacle of souls seeking escape from sin ; for its 
correspondence with its profession to be the messenger 
and servant of Him who cannot away with iniquity, 
nor suffer wrong, or fraud, or guile. 

Success is requisite in these works, for the encourage- 
ment and countenance of our own members, in a day of 
distrust and anxiety and painful foreboding. Every dis- 
play of energy at this time is doubly valuable. Coldness 
and inefficiency, be their cause what it may, assume a 
worse and more dangerous aspect in proportion to the 
discouragements that are pressing on from other quarters. 
It is a time for icork, for hard work, for faithful work, 
for giving proof of principle, if we have it in us. 

Incitement to yourselves and others to begin and go 
on with good deeds of this kind, is another end to be 
attained by prosecuting to full completion what we have 
in hand. Thirty years this city, this great, wealthy, 
rapidly growing city, has done almost nothing in the way 
of extension of the Church. In comparison with our 
brethren of other cities, Philadelphia, New York, Bos- 
ton, put us utterly to the blush. It is a debt you owe 
your brethren, to be forward in this work. Example is 
itself a duty and an opportunity of usefulness ; and for 
example in this matter there are thousands who at this 
time look to you. 

We are commanded to "provoke one another to love 
and to do good works," and therefore I will say, that no 

3 



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part of this diocese is, in proportion to its means, so 
backward in exertions and sacrifices for the maintenance 
and extension of religious truth as this city ; and that the 
common opinion is, that none in the city more stand in 
need of provocation to devise hberal things and show 
their profit in the faith w^iich they profess, than the 
weakhy and influential body now before me. 

I know the way of escape from these considerations to 
which many will almost involuntarily resort. " This is 
very well for him to hold ! It is his professional view of 
the matter! He talks so as a thing of course,, because it 
is his duty !" 

Yes, brethren ! It is my duty ! a duty I owe to my 
God and to your God, and a duty owed, because it is 
your duty to which I am urging — a duty too much unre- 
cognized, a duty of which too many are willingly igno- 
rant, a duty of which, as a community, we are scan- 
dalously negligent — the duty of rendering to God the 
things that are God's, of serving Him in preference to 
Mammon. He claims, I dare not say, as the world 
teaches us, with paltering tongue, di portion of your goods; 
but, the disposal of His own goods, of which He has 
made you stewards that He may try your faithfulness 
and fitness for better trusts elsewhere. " He that is faith- 
ful in least," says our Saviour, of this very subject, "is 
faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, 
is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been 
faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to 
your trust the true riches 1" It is to God that He requires 



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jou to be faithful. You are to be faithful to Him in the 
use you make of your worldly wealth. Will He accept 
an account of splendid houses, of costly furniture, of plate 
and ornaments of virtu, of expensive feasts and luxurious 
living, as proof of your faithfulness in stewardship 1 Do 
you expect to fulfil your Lord's injunction, and "make 
friends of the unrighteous mammon, that when ye fail, 
they may receive you into everlasting habitations," by 
such expenditures? Be assured, that he who is encour- 
aging such delusion, and whispering, " Is it not your 
right ? May you not do as you will with your own 1 
What harm in decent show and innocent gaity I What 
is money worth, if not to get them" — he, the father of 
lies, and god of this present world, is feeding you with 
ashes. He, who loved us, and gave Himself for us, who 
is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, directs to " sell 
that ye have, and give alms : provide yourselves with 
bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that 
faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth 
corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your 
heart be also." His direction comes back to the doctrine 
I started by maintaining, — - it is the heart's engrossment 
that is idolatry ; and therefore is covetousness, the love 
of money, trust in money, greediness of gain, and hard 
reluctance to part with wealth, so often in the Bible 
expressly called idolatry. The man on whom it has 
flung its icy chains is turned aside by his deceived 
heart, that he cannot deliver his soul from the delusion 
of the destroyer, nor say to the god of this world, whose 



20 



prisoner he is, " Is there not a he in my right hand ? 
shall I make gold my hope, or the fine gold my confi- 
dence f 

What, my brethren, can shield men who have it in 
their power to give to an object which they know and 
admit to be good in itself, right and fit at any time, pe- 
culiarly so now, and especially for them — an object 
which has the glory of the great Name of God exclusive- 
ly in view, and the advancement of His praise upon 
earth — an object which tends to the accomplishment of 
the ends for which the Son of God became man and 
died — what can shield those who love wealth too well 
to use it in such a w^ork, from the pressure of the teach- 
ing of the Saviour, and the denunciation of the prophet 1 

Do they deny the authority of Him who speaks ? 
No : I cannot believe of you, that the god of this w^orld 
has gotten power among us to the extent of persuading 
to a denial of the Lord who bought you. You will not 
resist Him. You wdll not refuse Him. But you can 
evade His demands and w^arnings ! The world, and the 
flesh, and spurious rehgion, will lend specious sophistry 
to do it. " He never meant to exact of you such sacri- 
fices as He enjoined on those to whom His language 
was first addressed." 

My brethren ! once and again you have been w^arned 
from this place to take heed lest that imagination delude 
you into a contented relinquishment of the life and im- 
mortality which He revealed to those whom that reve- 
lation encouraged " to leave all and follow Him !" The 



21 



doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God is to be 
trusted implicitly for all, when the sacrifice of any thing 
is required that His kingdom may be sought, is univer- 
sal in its apphcation and direction. It is for all times 
and persons. To every one who believes His right to 
command and promise, the Son of God has addressed 
His precept audits condition, ''&eek ye Jirst th.Q Kingdom 
of God and His righteousness ; and all these things shall 
be added unto you." You know the context of that pre- 
cept, the touching and impressive lesson drawn from the 
clothing of the lilies and the feeding of the birds, and 
how that lesson points and interprets the injunction to 
seek first God's kingdom. It is to the man who is 
afraid of growing poor that the Saviour speaks : — to 
the man whose heart shrinks from venturing to give, to 
the man in whose inward ear the great deluder whispers 
that " he need not give ; he ought not ; there is no claim 
upon him ; it is too much ; it would he inconvenient ; 
why should he more than others I luho else would do as 
much 1" and such like lies to fill his right hand and turn 
aside his deceived heart. 

How is God's kingdom sought \ 

A spurious religion has learned of the three enemies 
to man's salvation to say (or if it dare not say it, at least 
to fancy, and in its heart of hearts lay up the fancy as a 
ruling principle) that it is hy loishing for it ; by believing 
in its existence ; by aiming its desirableness, its excellence, 
its loveliness ; by professing with the lips to icant it ; by 
asking for it in babbhng prayers, perhaps, or with barren 



22 



sighs and tears ; and all the while living, in the practical 
realities of life, as if there were no such thing ! seeking 
just what the Gentiles seek, enjoying what they enjoy, 
claiming what they claim, and, within the bounds of 
human righteousness and social virtue, living as they 
live. Did Christ thus seek His Father's kingdom \ 
Did any of His apostles so understand His precept ? 
Did the first behevers, who gave up all that they might 
have all things in common, so understand it \ They 
made it a reality. To seek God's kingdom, with them, 
meant to give up something for it ; to test one's love of it, 
and desire for it, and estimation of it, for one's self, and 
to prove it unto others, by tendering in exchange what 
might have been had and kept, but for the need of so 
seeking possessions and advancement elsewhere. 

On another point, our Saviour argues, What do the 
pubUcans less than that ? And of the practice of mod- 
ern Christendom, eating and drinking and living in mirth 
and fulness, getting and spending, using and laying up, 
in utter unconsciousness that it can be needful to turn 
more than one in the hundred to any account beyond 
this present life — we may well take up the Saviour's 
parable, and ask. What do ye more than a righteous 
heathen I Ye kill not, defraud not, are temperate and 
chaste, and serve your generation in good deeds. So 
does he. And he does it, too, to serve his God, though 
to him an unknown God. Is that all that is demanded 
of the children of the kingdom ? Are they to get gain 
and spend it ; to use the goods of this world and en- 



23 



joy them; as those who know of none, and are called to 
none, beyond it \ 

" But this," says one, " is putting heaven on sale ! It 
is making a man the worker of his own salvation !" 

That is utterly untrue. The imputation against such 
teaching, of exalting human merit, and depreciating the 
Saviour's work, is an empty calumny. 

The word of God, indeed, talks of " working out our 
own salvation," and tells us to do it, " with fear and 
trembling ;" but not as if any thing we can do or give 
can purchase that which is utterly, immeasurably, un- 
speakably beyond all price and our utmost efforts. Be- 
cause we are saved, we must " seeW our priceless bless- 
ing. But it must be sought ! and in giving all we have 
to seek it, if occasion be, iDe are put on trial, not heaven 
put on sale ! Was heaven bartered for Isaac, when 
God tempted Abraham ? When the patriarch's faith 
was counted to him for righteousness in that he counted 
not his own son, the son of his old age, the seed of 
promise, dear unto him, but freely gave him up at the 
asking of the Lord, trusting to God for the recompense 
and fulfilment of the promise, we received an example of 
the righteousness by faith by which we are to obtain 
salvation, if we are saved at all. How is your faith to 
be proved and tested, if not by testing your willingness 
to give up to God, your abiUty to trust in God ? It is 
in what you love, in what you need, in what your hearts 
are prone to cling to, that that willingness and ability 
are to be put to test. When in the way of God's ordi- 



/ 

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nary providence, by those to whom He has given the 
right and duty to advise, direct and lead you in things 
spiritual, an appeal is made to you to give of that you 
have for carrying out the Divine provisions for the re- 
demption of mankind, for supporting and extending the 
Church which is the visible Body of your Lord, for ad- 
vancing and exalting the honor of God's great Name — 
then is your time to examine yourselves, whether ye be 
in the faith ; to prove your own selves, whether your 
heart he with Him who hath called you, and spared not 
His only Son for your redemption, and with Him given 
you all things needful for time and for eternity, or with 
the treasure which the arch-deceiver would fain persuade 
you to make your god. Take not his lie in your right 
hand ! Say not. Deliver me, to that which he would 
have you worship ! Let it not be written of you in the 
record to be produced at the last day, 

HE FEEDETH ON ASHES ! 



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